Integrate Symbol and Label
This technique saves some space and brings a refined look to the symbology in your maps. Integrating a feature’s label into its symbol makes for a professional style that should impress your client. Begin by building a symbol that will accommodate a label. In this case, I have a single digit number, which is basically […]
A Multivariate Line Style
Wanted to share some symbology I developed for an electric utilities map recently. There were multiple variables to portray over aerial imagery. The first thing I did for this map was to adjust the imagery to black and white and tone down the contrast to really let the lines pop, then I started working on […]
Illuminated Point Symbology
This will be a quick one, I’ll overview how I created the glowing/heat effect on the GISP location points in my GISP map. The points represent cities where there is a GISP certification. These points also have an attribute for the number of GISP’s in that city but I will not be representing that information […]
Text Masking Gradients
I’d like to share a masking technique that I recently used in Illustrator (CS4). This technique involves masking lines around text labels that are drawn over a water body with a gradient effect fill. Notice in the image below that the thin isoline effect is masked around the labels yet the shoreline gradient effect is […]
Open an ArcMap [.ai] Export in Illustrator
![Open an ArcMap [.ai] Export in Illustrator](https://www.bgcarto.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ai-FI-150x150.jpg "Open an ArcMap [.ai] Export in Illustrator")
So you’ve read the last article, Some Tips on Map Layout & Exporting a Map to Illustrator and you set up a map layout in ArcMap with the intent to finish the cartographic design in Illustrator. Well there’s a few more things you should know about opening that file in Illustrator. I always rework the […]
